Open Water Divers in Caves

This spent this last week cave diving in Cave Country, Florida.  I saw something at Ginnie Springs that was truly amazing!  I am coming out of The Devil's Eye, when I notice that there are two open water divers down past the sign.  To make maters even more amazing, they only had one light between the two of them, and to top it off, one of them was towing a float with a flag on it, attached to a long yellow nylon rope inside the cave!  Wonders never cease to amaze me.

I escorted both of them out of the cave, took them to the surface and tried to explain to them just how dangerous their actions were.  Their response to me was "It's OK, we're local!"  Like this is some kind of excuse for dangerous behavior!

Dive Addicts in Cozumel

Just returned from a great week of diving in Cozumel with 28 divers from Dive Addicts,   www.diveaddicts.com

Even though this was just a recreational open water dive trip, we had a great time!   We stayed at the Fiesta American, and all-inclusive resort located on the South end of town.  The in-house dive operation, Dive House, did a great job, and we were very satisfied with the service and the level of the dive operation.  The boats were large, spacious and comfortable with a covered roof for those of us that wanted a little protection from the sun. 

The rooms were nice at the resort and the facilities were more than adequate.  The large swimming pool was great for after diving relaxation, and the meals were pretty good as well. 

The only complaint I really had during the week was the stinking mosquitoes!  They were out in mass, and I came home with 53 mosquito bites that were just driving me crazy! 

The diving was typical Cozumel drift style, with all dives being led by very competent dive masters.  Of course, the beautiful walls and swim-throughs are always spectacular, and the underwater life was as good as I have ever seen it in Cozumel.  I’m assuming that due to the currents, the fish and crustaceans grow to bigger than normal size.  It seemed like almost every species we saw was enormous!  

On our last dive of the trip, we had the opportunity to spend a couple of minutes with a giant Loggerhead turtle, which was the largest turtle I have ever seen underwater!  It’s head was at least 12 inches across if not larger and its shell was at least 5 feet long or longer.  It must have been very old, as its back was encrusted with barnacles and marine growth.  The turtle must have been near blind as it kept swimming and bumping into us! 

Great trip.  Cozumel as usual was pretty decent diving!  Easy to get to, and the price tag for the week was less than a thousand dollars including lodging, food and diving.  Not bad!  

Interesting Deep Saturation Diving Project in New York City

Thought you might enjoy this article in the New York Times about work on the New York City water system:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/23tunnel.html?pagewanted=all

(Thanks to Eric Dasque for the link! www.thinkingdiver.com)

U-534 German WWII U-boat

Fascinating story about the U-534 a WWII German U-boat sunk by the Australian Air Force.

http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/classicvids/8231644/classic-from-the-deep

Enjoy!

Diving in Palau May 8, 2011

Ripping currents, loads of fish including manta rays, turtles, sharks, Napoleon wrasse, tuna, barracudas, jacks and other large fish, provided continuous entertainment on most of the 25 dives that we did that week, aboard the Palau Aggressor.  The topside islands, true to their reputation, are one of the most beautiful sites on earth.  They look like someone dropped dark green dumplings in a perfectly clear and still blue ocean.  We saw literally hundreds of small-uninhabited picture perfect islands that pock mark the Philippine Sea. 

Gwen and I spent the week of May 8^th doing up to 5 dives per day, on a very well run live-a-board.  The Palau Aggressor is a catamaran that is very stable as well as spacious.  The crew was top notch and ran the boat without any hitches.  The chef was from NYC and did an excellent job in continuing to surprise us with amazing food at each meal. 

The diving was very good, maybe not the very best that I have done, but very good nonetheless.  The most exciting dives of the week were usually the channel dives where there was a ripping current that attracted the large pelagics.  We would typically swim as a group to the staging area where we would hook into the reef with the supplied reef hooks and wait for the action to start.  A few times we got skunked, but more often than not, we had a great show!  Due to the ever changing currents and the fact that we were typically drift diving, the entire boat usually dived as one large group or two smaller groups.  If I had any one complaint, it would be that diving as a large 16-person group can get a little tedious, however the advantage of diving from a live-a-board far outweighs the problems with a crowd.  Although most of the sites would have been easily accessible from one of the numerous day boats that ply their trade in the area, the advantage of the live-a-board is that you don’t spend long trips on small boats all day long. 

Blue Corner, Big Drop Off, Peleliu Corner, and German Channel were some of the best sites of the week, with the most action! 

We also did a 3-hour land tour in Peleliu, which was fascinating!  We saw lots of WWII relics including a Japanese and American tank, as well as Japanese gun placements.  We saw Orange Beach where 3000 US servicemen lost their lives trying to make their way to shore.  The Japanese were entrenched in over 600 caves on the island, and what was supposed to be a quick 3-day process to secure the island, ended up taking 78 days and was one of the bloodiest battles of the war.  A very sobering site and one that I will not forget soon! 

Gwen and I shared the boat with 14 other divers who were all Russians from Moscow.  This was an experience in and of itself!  The Russian divers were a hardy bunch, but also in typical Russian fashion spent much of each night drinking vodka and Jack Daniels and smoking cigars!  Probably not an ideal combination for diving, but they seemed to have amazing stamina! 

Diving in Palau is something that everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime.  Unique and beautiful scenery both above and below the water!  

Advanced Trimix Training at Lake Mead

This past weekend, Josh and I were at Lake Mead, outside of Las Vegas training a group of divers in an Advanced Trimix class and another group finishing up their Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures.  We had a great time, with the exception that I managed to get all the way down there and forgot my dry suit!  I had to have it flown down on Delta!  What a pain the rear!

Water temp was 54 degrees at the surface and 52 at depth.  Nice brisk dive!  We were very lucky with the weather.  We had very windy evenings and were afraid that we were going to get blown out a couple of times, which wouldn't have been the first time at Lake Mead!

We had a great time with the group which consisted of Richard Lamb, Amy Smith, Jack Weimer and Jeannie Weimer who all completed their Advanced Trimix and Todd DuLaney and Ray Kovuisa who completed their Adv. Nitrox and Deco Procedures.

This is a picture of Ray's special super hero Finish Rubber Man Suit!  All one piece, it made underwater communications take on a whole new meaning with his rubber mittens!   You can see Jack standing next to Ray is concerned about something!

Cave Country right after Christmas

Josh, Michael and I spent 8 days in Cave Country at our house in Ft. White, Florida www.cavecountrylodging.com starting the day after Christmas this year.  We were working on a CCR Cave Instructor course with Phil Short from the UK.

I had an absolutely wonderful time!  Diving anytime with my boys is a great experience, but also being challenged both physically and mentally, made for memorable experiences!  I saw parts of Ginnie Springs that I had never been in previously, including a beautiful little syphon that was absolutely gorgeous!  We did the Grand Traverse from Orange Grove to Peacock 1, several long traverses in Ginnie, and had a good long swim in Little River.  Over all, we spent about 20 hours underwater that week, and really had a great time!

As usual, Phil puts on a very demanding course and I went to bed each night dead dog tired!  Of course, I always enjoy diving with my boys and we had some very memorable experiences.  8 straight days of fairly aggressive cave diving, and I was about ready for a day or so rest!  At least I was pretty much able to keep up with them.  The old man hasn't completely lost it just yet!

By the way, did I mention that it was stinking cold?  It was only 18 degrees the first night we arrived!

I'm looking forward to getting back down there again in April for some more cave diving!